CIVILIANS fleeing Afghanistan
yesterday reported mass burials of bombing victims in and around the eastern
city of Jalalabad, supporting claims by the Taliban of major casualties
and extensive damage to property.

The refugees' accounts are the first
provided by sources independent of the Taliban. The Taliban are so confident
that their embassy in Pakistan yesterday issued its first media visas since
the September 11 attacks.

The allies have repeatedly stressed
that the bombings are aimed not at the Afghan people, but at Osama bin
Laden and the Taliban, who are harbouring him.

The Islamic regime said last night
that at least 200 people died in the village of Karam. Earlier in the day,
a spokesman for the ruling militia told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic
Press: "So far 160 bodies have been recovered, mostly women and children.
This is not an exaggeration. More bodies are still being recovered."

An Afghan journalist who arrived
in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar on Thursday said about 40 of the
60 mud and brick houses in Karam had been flattened by missiles and bombs.

Danish Karwakhel, a reporter for
Wahadat, a Pakistani Pashto-language newspaper, who lives in Kabul, said:
"People were digging through rubble with shovels or with their hands looking
for bodies and looking for their belongings.

"I was on my way from Kabul to the
border and walked to the village. I arrived at about 2pm and there were
mass funerals going on. I saw many bodies in coffins. Eight people were
being buried here, five there, it was a very emotional scene.

"So many people were crying. There
were hundreds of people who had come from surrounding villages to help
carry the bodies, dig graves and attend the funerals. Local people said
100 people had died and many were missing."

The village, surrounded by rice and
wheat fields and orange trees, lies in a valley close to what locals said
was an abandoned camp of bin Laden's al-Qa'eda network.

An official with the Taliban's Bakhtar
news agency in Jalalabad said body parts, household belongings and at least
one unexploded bomb littered the countryside around the village. There
were also "horrific" injuries.

Sher Sha Hamdard said after visiting
the village: "I hate to say this, but I'm glad I saw these things because
the world has to know what the Americans have done here."